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Category Archives: Hobbies

So it’s Friday night and I’m about to watch Jessica Jones on Netflix, and I need a snack, right? But I’m craving chocolate and I’m in no mood to go to the store to pick up Chips Ahoy. What do I do? I make my own cookies. And you can bet your ass they were better than store-bought ones. Continue reading →

So, since the Great Cake Fail of 2011 I’ve always been afraid of making a cake cake, but I faced the challenge today to make a Carrot Cake. It’s still in the oven but it smells ah-mah-zing! I used GemmaStafford‘s recipe (with a couple of changes). Since I don’t have a stand or hand mixer I did everything by hand. Continue reading →

I’ve been meaning to make this forever (not really, just like, a couple of weeks) but I had no idea how to make the dough for the base. My mom told me to do a Pâte Brisée (pastry dough) and I wasn’t too confident but it ended up being delicious. So here’s the recipe:

For the dough:

250 grams of self-rising flour (or all-purpose flour, but then you’ll need to take out two teaspoons, and then add a teaspoon of baking soda and a teaspoon of cornstarch)

125 grams (or one stick) of butter or margarine (very cold, put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before using it)

1 large egg (cold, put it in the refrigerator with the butter or margarine)

2 tablespoons of sugar (white, regular sugar)

1 pinch of salt (I used salted butter so I skipped this step)

2 tablespoons of (very cold) water

For the filling:

6 – 8 apples, I used Galas

Juice of one lemon

3 tablespoons of white sugar

3 tablespoons of brown sugar

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1/4 tablespoon of nutmeg

1 tablespoon of butter

Preparation:

Preparing the dough is simple but a bit tricky because you can’t use your hands or you’ll warm it and life will be ruined. You’ll need one of those thingies to mix butter into sugar, or a regular fork (the thingie is much more fun, though).

Put the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cornstarch in a bowl, and mix it

Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the flour bowl

Use a fork or the thingie (the thingie!) to cut the butter into the flour until the mix looks like dry oats or fat sand

Add the egg and mix, it’ll look like Playdoh that stayed out of the can for too long

Add a tablespoon of water at a time, and keep mixing, but do it fast, you don’t want the dough to get warm

At this point, the dough looks sort of like wet sand, and it’s very, well, sandy

Sprinkle some flour onto your work surface and dump the dough there, work with your hands to integrate it a bit better, but do it quickly because, again, we don’t want it to get warm

When it’s compact, wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator or the freezer for 30 minutes

Play some music while you peel and chop the apples into dices the size of your index phalange

Squeeze lemon juice on your apples and mix well, to avoid oxidation

Sprinkle the 3 spoonfuls of each sugar, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg on top of the diced apples and mix well. Reserve for now

Preheat your oven to 250°C and lightly grease your pie tin

Take your dough and extend it with your rolling pin, about three millimeters is enough

Use your rolling pin to wrap the dough and put it in the pie tin, covering the sides and making sure there are no air pockets

Cut the excess dough, pinch some holes in it, and put it in the oven for 10. You can put wax paper and use some weights like lentils, rice, or marbles, but I said “f*uck it!” and didn’t do any of that. Because I’m like that

While that happens, put the remaining dough back in the fridge for a bit

Take out the semi-cooked dough of the oven, take the remaining dough out of the fridge, and quickly extend it on your work surface with your rolling pin

Put the apple mixture in the semi-cooked dough, cut the tablespoon of butter in small pieces, and sprinkle it on the apple mixture

Do the thing with the rolling pin again and put it on top of the apples. Cut the excess dough, pinch some holes with a fork

Put the pie back in the oven and raise the temperature to 350°C. Let it cook for 35-40 minutes

Wash the pie with a lightly beaten egg, butter, or milk, I used an egg, and just for fun I put a teaspoon of sugar in

Now, I’m not going to lie and say this is the best recipe in the whole wide world because I’m sure there are better and more efficient ways to make an apple pie, but I had fun making this, and the result was delicious even if the pictures don’t reflect it (because I’m good at cooking but I suck at taking pictures). I will probably try this again skipping the precooking the base part and see how that goes, but I’ll probably use a different filling (berries sound like an interesting choice). I’ll do a new post when that happens 🙂

Based on Chanda Hahn’s characters from the “Unfortunate Fairytale” Series. I promise I’m not making any profit out of this, it’s just a Creative Writing exercise. This story is set after the Bethrotal but before the War.Continue reading →

I don’t think I have a favorite type of location. Right now we’re playing in the Underdark (Forgotten Realms), we escaped Menzoberranzan and are now in a place called Neverlight Grove. It’s… dark, so now I’m wishing I had created a character with night or low-light vision. Oh, well.

It was a Ravenloft adventure. The Mists brought the characters to an old manor, where restless spirits were trying to tempt them and entrap them there for eternity. The characters were separated after a while, and every room shifted to show what would tempt each of them, and then show them the punishment they deserved. The manor showed them the horrors that happened before their arrival as weird transitions between past and present, which caused players and characters to be freaked out of their wits. One of them fell to the horror of the visions (failed a Horror saving throw) and almost killed the rest of the party in his delusional state. It was awesome!